Even the most technophobic of company bosses has learnt how to stop worrying and love the Blackberry - next stop: virtual board meetings. Neil Tague speaks to some top technologists about what the next few years will bring and how it will affect your business
As implausible as it now seems, just a decade ago there were many businesses that got by perfectly well without emails or even a company website. While there remain a handful of very powerful types who tell us they still don't trifle themselves with such faddish gadgetry, for the vast majority of us, technology is a reality, and one that's changing at an ever faster pace.
"Do businesses need to invest in technology? Totally and absolutely," says Jeff Coghlan, managing director of Macclesfield-based Matmi New Media Design. "If a business is to gain or retain a competitive advantage, it's got to be looking ahead, questioning how it interacts with its customers and how it can harness the changes in technology."
Working with cutting-edge technology and equipment keeps businesses at the forefront of competitive markets. Dr Allan Brown, managing director of Tepnel Research Products & Services in Manchester, says: "We almost need to be ahead of the game in terms of new technology available. We are constantly looking two to three years ahead, identifying what technologies might be available."
The pace of change has been upped by the broadband revolution. While the techies were talking years ago about how your PC could assume the role of TV, radio, retail centre and more, the technology to make it a reality was not widely available enough to persuade the sceptics. The internet could still be a cumbersome tool.
But today, with broadband available to the majority of UK homes and workplaces, the internet is all-powerful. High-quality pictures and sound have made the internet a vital part of how business operates. Mark Newton-Jones, chief executive of Littlewoods Shop Direct, told Insider this year that the broadband age means online sales now account for 35 per cent of the company's sales, a figure he expects to pass 50 per cent in a few years.
So where will technology take us? Mobility will be the key, according to Dr Moneeb Awan, managing director of Salford software house eSay Solutions. "Everything we do today as a business function we'll be able to do tomorrow on a mobile platform. Increasing efficiency is the driver and employees are increasingly able to perform tasks as if in the office," he says.
ESay director Colin Yates says a culture change is en route. "Mobiles, laptops and PDAs (personal digital assistants) have changed where people work but not how they work," he says. "The next stage is giving field workers the ability to do everything they need to do on the spot, and that's what we're doing with businesses like United Utilities."
United Utilities (UU), like other utilities providers, is faced with the ongoing challenge of cutting down leaks in its network of pipes and is outperforming rivals. In the old days UU field workers, upon locating a leak, would fill a form in and drive it back to head office to be allocated to a technician. Now they are equipped with mobile devices that allow them to file the report into the management system, take a GPS reading and photographs and call a technician. It also includes a time-tracking tool.
"We've replaced paper, cut inefficiencies out and increased flexibility," says Yates. "And lone worker safety is looked after without having to constantly phone in." UU estimates that it is saving 175 hours' travel time a week or £3109,000 a year, while reducing its fuel use and carbon footprint.
The technology is there, but is it really affordable for most businesses, which don't have the resources of UU? "It's a scaleable business," says Awan. "The technology is now available for all to exploit. Niche organisations like us are taking the infrastructure and are versatile enough to deliver the benefits to businesses of whatever size."
For his part, Yates can only see the PDA getting better and better. "I think the PDA will become so powerful that it will be your only computer," he says. "If it can display big documents and print, then why not?"
The environmental advantages of mobile working technology are regularly stressed and sustainability has risen inexorably to the forefront of the nation's conscience over the last year - no company is complete without a corporate social responsibility statement. Colin Birchall, corporate sales manager at Rapid Technologies, says that it is a driver for the meeting-room technologies his business produces.
"The average rep covers 15 to 30,000 miles a year, not including flights, and produces 17 to 20 tonnes of carbon," he says. "Also, if you drive that many miles, you probably spend more than five days a year just sitting in traffic jams. The green issues alone make technology a worthwhile investment."
Rapid offers what Birchall calls a "complete meeting room solution", marrying video-conferencing with interactive white boards and high-definition audio-visual equipment. He reckons that the next few years will see interactivity in particular come to the fore.
"Education as a sector has invested massively in interactive white boards and as people enter the workforce they'll be asking: "where's your interactive white board?' It's also ludicrous that companies spend loads on their offices, then use a flipchart in the boardroom," he says. "That's a 100-year old technology. To engage with your customers and to enhance their impressions of you, investing is a no-brainer. It also increases efficiency as you can send the results to a PDF or web document, rather than have someone type up minutes.
"All this has become more affordable as the infrastructure is now in place. Two years ago we got one or two videoconferencing queries a week, now it's ten a day. People are looking at the costs and liking it.
"Six, seven years ago it was a buzzword and there were too many operators - now there are six or seven who all comply to an industry standard and the product works. With the high-definition telepresence screens, it genuinely looks like someone on a screen's just through a window." Birchall says that health and law firms have been among early adapters.
For Coghlan, investment in technology has given him the ability to focus on his business of improving other businesses through technology. He's done that by investing in Matmi's own headquarters.
"It's a modern office that makes my life run a lot smoother," he says. "All our calls are logged and I can have them redirected to wherever I am in the world. We use LED lighting, rather than the mercury-based ones everyone thinks are green. We have a virtual receptionist, while everyone who enters the building is photographed, with the image being sent to my mobile wherever I am. We use Voice over IP phones, so can call all over the world for next to nothing."
Coghlan practises what he preaches. And what he preaches is progress. Matmi writes advergames for businesses or charities, games that offer entertainment for the user, while advertising. One example is a football keepy-ups game written for property agency DTZ - exactly the sort of things blokes in offices will send round to their mates on a long Friday afternoon to stoke up a bit of competition.
There was also a viral game designed for the most recent Comic Relief that accounted for 10 per cent of the charity's online traffic. Coghlan says that people who went through the game before pledging committed 30 per cent more than donors who arrived by other means. If your business advertises, he warns that you'd better be aware of the changing possibilities:
"The market's changed drastically and the big advertising agencies are acquiring small digital agencies like crazy," he says. "The recording industry didn't adapt to changing technology quickly enough and was demonised. It eventually will die a death. And TV advertising's going the same way - people have been fed so much rubbish over the years they've been turned off."
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